This week’s tips – taken from nearly 80 tips in our “The Big Book of Site Search Tips” – focus on refinements in site search. Refinements refer to the filters or categories you create that allow site visitors to narrow the results of a search, so they only see products that fit certain criteria (e.g. price range, 4-star reviews, gender-specific, etc.). Here are some tips to consider when using refinements in your site search (these can also apply to navigational refinements):

• Don’t show too many refinement options when displaying them as links – Instead, show the most popular and have a “more” option to see the rest. Providing too many refinement options can be distracting. If the site visitor is interested, a “more” option will make it quick and easy to drill down into your site while maintaining the real estate to promote other items.

• Test the placement of refinements – Businesses provide refinements in different places on their sites, often at the top of pages or in the left navigation pane. The bottom of the page is probably not the best position for refinement options, since visitors have to scroll down the page to view them. Any of these options may work for you and your site visitors, but it is important to test different positions.

• Allow people to navigate between refinements on the same level – In other words, if a visitor clicks on a refinement but then decides they want to see a different refinement, don’t make them click “back” to get to the original search results page first. They should be able to simply click a different refinement option from that page and easily see a new batch of results.

Download the Big Book of Site Search Tips

Today we’ll share a few more tips from our new white paper “The Big Book of Site Search Tips” (available for free download). As we mentioned last week, the full paper includes nearly 80 tips and suggestions for ways to make small improvements to your web site search to see big results. Here are a few tips related to page lay-out and format we hope you’ll find helpful:

• Have clear and specific product and content titles in the search results – Titles should be accurate and descriptive about the content your visitors will see when they click on the results. If titles are not accurate, your visitors may not click on a result that is otherwise relevant, or they may click on it only to find that it didn’t contain what they were looking for. If this happens too often, they’re likely to abandon the search, as well as your site.

• Have consistent image sizes – Search results will look cleaner, and be more readable and easy to scan if the text is not disrupted by images of different sizes. If search results are shown in a grid view, consistently sized images will produce a regular pattern and a better looking page.

• Show the total number of results so visitors know how many are available – This helps them determine how far into the results they want to click. Additionally, if the search term yields a large number of results it may signal to them that they need to narrow their search – or click a refinement option.

• Have a mobile version of your search results – The mobile version of Amazon.com is not much more than a search page. The number of people accessing the web via mobile devices is growing. On the small window of a mobile device you don’t have room to offer the navigational and promotional options that you have on your normal site. A mobile search is a vital part of any mobile site and will have fewer refinements, sorting and viewing options. In this case, it’s extremely important to offer highly relevant results.

Download the Big Book of Site Search Tips

We recently posted an interview with Braden Hoeppneer from Coastal Contacts. One of the coolest things I found out from Braden is way they’re using social media to sell glasses (a relatively new product line for them). They have a virtual mirror application that lets you up upload a photo and see what the glasses will look like on you. You can then share the images and get feedback from your friends on the glasses. In some ways this is actually an improvement to the in-store shopping experience because you can get input from friends who aren’t shopping with you. Additionally, each time someone shares the virtual mirror images it acts as an ad for coastal contacts, drawing more people to the site. Very cool! Braden shares plenty of other experiences in the interview. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.

As mentioned in our earlier post, we’re starting a new series of tips here on our blog for improving your site search, as part of our new whitepaper “The Big Book of Site Search Tips” that’s now available. Here is the first batch of tips for you to consider. We’ll be back with another batch of tips next Tuesday…

• Offer a search box, not a search link – Search boxes are easier to find and use. They make it easier for people to search with fewer clicks. The search box has become iconic, thanks to the popularity of Google, so the presence of a box telegraphs the availability of search easily and quickly.

• Make sure your search box is large enough to contain long search phrases – Design the size of your search box to meet the needs of your site visitors. For instance, if visitors on your site use long keywords to search, make sure the box can display the entire term so they can easily see what they typed. Short or small search boxes make it hard to read a long search term, which will increase the likelihood that site visitors will spell it incorrectly.

• Test different positions for the search box, and note which positions generate the most search traffic – SLI Systems customer Black Forest Décor took this approach, moving its search box from the right-hand upper corner of its site to the center. The online home décor retailer made other changes at the same time, including increasing the size of the search box. The company found that site search revenue per customer increased 84% and the conversion rate increased 34%.

Download the Big Book of Site Search Tips here.

Today we’re kicking off a new series of blog posts with tips for improving your on-site search. The series is part of a new SLI Systems whitepaper called the “Big Book of Site Search Tips”. The whitepaper contains nearly 80 tips for how companies can improve the look and feel and the relevance of search results pages; as well as how to use search for merchandising and how to get the most out of site search data.

It’s no secret that site search is an ever-more critical part of the online customer experience, and our new paper – and forthcoming series of blog posts – are intended to help companies take care of fairly simple aspects of the search function on their sites to make sure customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. The tips will also provide guidance on how to drive more people to use the search box to browse your company’s web site, as research shows that people who use site search convert at 2-3 times the rate of those who don’t.

A 2009 report by Forrester Research for Shop.org shows that retailers rank “improving site search results pages” as the third most important area of focus in 2010;, the report also says 71% of retailers surveyed will make site search/browse results a priority in the months ahead. We want to help retailers (and other content-rich sites) as they take a closer look at their own site search and give them ideas for simple things they can do that can have a tremendous impact – things like making sure the search box appears on every page of a web site, and ensuring that the search box is prominently placed where visitors can easily find it – e.g., not next to another similar looking box, which might be used for newsletter sign-ups.

We’ll get into more tips here on our blog (see our next post), and every Tuesday for the next several weeks we’ll present more tips from the whitepaper. We’re also creating a #SiteSearchTues hashtag on Twitter which we’ll use to post the tips – so feel free to use the same hashtag as you provide feedback or post tips of your own.

The “Big Book of Site Search Tips” is now available for FREE download (registration required) from our web site. We look forward to sharing the tips with you, and hope to hear from you about what’s helped you improve your own site search.

Download the Big Book of Site Search Tips